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Seeking Support at U.N., Bush Offers Concession on Iraq

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 &#0151; The Bush administration, yielding slightly in its opposition to diluting American authority over the Iraqi occupation, proposed today that the United Nations recognize the American-picked Iraqi Governing Council as a unit that "will embody the sovereignty" of Iraq until the country returns to self-rule.

The shift is a linguistic attempt to enhance the status of the Iraqi council without necessarily giving it more power, American officials said.

The latest American proposal on the sovereignty issue was part of a renewed bid to get the United Nations Security Council to bless the American position on the speed of transition to self-rule and clear the way for international aid to secure and rebuild Iraq.

France has demanded that the Governing Council be vested with authority as the legitimate government of Iraq before it goes along with the American-proposed resolution. Ten days ago, Secretary General Kofi Annan more or less endorsed the French view, dimming prospects for a positive vote.

The United States opposes such a step, saying the Governing Council is not ready to govern Iraq. The Bush administration has also declined to put forward a timetable as to when the council may be prepared to take power, but in the new language disclosed today the council was given until December 15 to set its own timetable.

But it was unclear this afternoon whether the proposed new resolution, with its ambiguous language, would gain the votes of enough members of the Security Council to pass, thus encouraging other countries to send troops and aid. The crucial waverer is Russia, with which the United States has been negotiating on changing language on sovereignty and other issues.

American diplomats said they had heard that Russia welcomed the resolution but that the Russians said it did not go far enough. A vote is now expected on Wednesday.

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American officials say they should at least be able to get 9 or 10 of the 15 council members on board, with the rest abstaining. It takes nine votes to pass a resolution, provided none of the five countries with a veto exercise that power.

But a 9-to-6 or 10-to-5 vote would be considered by some to be "humiliating," as one Western diplomat put it, and send a signal of irresolution rather than unanimity at a troubled and violent time in Iraq.

The United States was hurriedly circulating a new draft of its proposed resolution even as it pressed its efforts around the world to get more financial aid and troops to help it occupy an increasingly violent Iraq. But even as it pressed its case, it encountered obstacles on two fronts.

On the troop side, though Turkey has voted to send troops, the Iraqi Governing Council today reiterated its opposition to accepting them. An American official acknowledged that the council's stance was embarrassing for the administration.

The second front has to do with aid. American officials say they hope they will be able to secure a few billion dollars at the Madrid conference later this month, to avoid the donors' session being seen as a fiasco. But they say the donations would pour out more generously if the United Nations could pass a resolution on Iraq.

Indeed, Spain, the conference sponsor, is growing anxious that without a resolution, the session it is holding will be a step backward, not forward.

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A version of this article appears in print on October 13, 2003 of the National edition with the headline: Seeking Support at U.N., Bush Offers Concession on Iraq. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe